Woman kidnapped at age 11 by stepfather, held captive and forced to bear 9 children opens up about 19 years of unspeakable horror
Rosalynn McGinnis, who was kidnapped by her stepfather, Henri Piette, at the age of 11 and taken to Mexico, where she gave birth to nine of his children before getting the chance to escape, has recently opened up about the ordeal.
On an episode of 'The Dr. Oz Show' which will air on Tuesday, November 19, McGinnis recalled the harrowing details of how she was abducted by Piette from her school in Oklahoma because he wanted to get back at her mother who had broken up with him when he started physically assaulting her.
After he forced her to "marry" him, the couple lived together in a filthy tent in Mexico, undetected by US authorities for nearly two decades leading up to September 2017, when Piette was arrested — a year after McGinnis escaped and contacted police.
By then, McGinnis had already mothered nine children, eight of whom she took with her when she fled and contacted the US embassy.
McGinnis said on the show that if it wasn't for a kind-hearted mystery couple, she would have never managed to escape the deplorable condition she was trapped in, according to a Daily Mail report.
"We were in the grocery store, we were in front of them, and we had a bunch of kids, of course, and it was me and Henri Piette. The age difference and all the children. Actually, we were short on the bill to pay for the groceries and they paid it for us," she said.
She added: "They asked... where we lived. It started like that. Henri was the type that always kept people away. But they knew something wasn't right. So, they decided to do something about it."
When her stepfather started suspecting that the strangers at the store were onto him and his crime, he made preparations for them to move out of the tents.
"We moved and they found out where we were and she's like I know there's something wrong. If you can ever get away, I'll help you," McGinnis recalled the unknown woman telling her.
She continued, saying that before she fled with her children, she did not tell them that they were escaping the place.
"They didn't know. I kept the truth from them until I escaped from Mexico. They were really shocked. They've been through, especially my older children," she said. "The reason I didn't tell them, of course, was because what I knew inside was how much it's damaged me. I didn't want them to grow up knowing that."
Piette would abuse his kids in multiple ways, McGinnis claimed. "He would tell them they're animals. He would treat them like animals."
"'That the only reason that they're alive is because your mother's here'. Otherwise, 'if she wasn't that I'd kill all of you'. He would hit them and then I would step in and it would just be horrible. Any kind of abuse that you can think of, he did to me," she said.
Piette has since denied wrongdoing, claiming that their sexual encounters had been consensual. Earlier this year, he was convicted of kidnapping her. He is still waiting for a determination on the rape charges.